Contents

History

Early history

WPMI first signed on the air on March 12, 1982 and was the first
independent station in the state of Alabama. It was also the first new commercial station to sign on in the Mobile/Pensacola market since future sister station WEAR signed on 28 years earlier. The station was originally owned by Hess Broadcasting and ran a general entertainment programming format consisting of
cartoons,
westerns, classic
sitcoms, old
movies,
drama shows, and
religious programs. WPMI's original studios were located on St. Michael Street in Mobile. In 1985, Hess sold WPMI to Michigan Energy Resources. However, the sale did not affect programming practices. By that time, WPMI was acquiring stronger programming, such as more recent cartoons and off-network sitcom reruns. On April 9, 1987, WPMI became a charter affiliate of the
Fox network, when that network began offering primetime programming.

In January 1989, Michigan Energy Resources sold WPMI to Clear Channel Communications; the company (now known as
iHeartMedia), which is primarily known for its ownership of over 1,000 radio stations, at the time had owned only a dozen radio stations. With the purchase, WPMI became Clear Channel's first television station. The company acquired several more television stations later in other mid-sized markets during 1989.

In 1991, Clear Channel entered into a
local marketing agreement, which became a common practice at that time, with Mercury Broadcasting-owned WJTC (channel 44). The company purchased programming time on WJTC to run shows on that station that could not fit onto WPMI's schedule.

Upon becoming an NBC affiliate, the station began airing more syndicated
talk and
reality shows. The NBC affiliation's move to WPMI resulted in the station having to move most of the syndicated cartoons and most of the off-network sitcoms that it would no longer have time to air due to network programming commitments to LMA partner WJTC, which became a
UPN affiliate two weeks after the switch on January 11, 1995. Clear Channel purchased WJTC outright in 2004, creating a duopoly with WPMI.

On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel Communications entered into an agreement to sell its television stations to
private equity firmProvidence Equity Partners,[1] in order to focus on its radio properties. On March 15, 2008, WPMI and the other Clear Channel television properties were sold to Providence Equity-operated
Newport Television.

In 2009, WPMI began using digital
billboards within its viewing area—displaying headlines from a real-time
Twitter feed alongside a photo of anchors Greg Peterson and Kym Thurman, and chief meteorologist Derek Beasley. At one point, one of the headlines displayed next to the anchors' pictures read "3 Accused of
Gang Rape in
Monroeville". A motorist shot a picture of this billboard and sent it to a
South Carolina-based
blog, "The Palmetto Scoop".[2] The picture would later appear on
Mashable,[3] and was then distributed worldwide in e-mails and other blogs, becoming an
internet meme. WPMI general manager Shea Grandquest and
news director Wes Finley were reportedly suspended over the incident, though it was never officially confirmed by station executives.[4][5]

On July 19, 2012, Newport Television announced the sale of WPMI and WJTC, along with five other television stations to the
Sinclair Broadcast Group (the owner of WEAR-TV and WFGX). However, due to
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules which forbid both one company from owning two of the four highest-rated stations or more than two stations overall in the same market, the licenses of WPMI and WJTC were transferred to
Deerfield Media, although Sinclair would operate the two stations under a local marketing agreement.[6] The transaction was completed on December 3, 2012.[7] As in certain other markets where Sinclair operates two "Big Three" or "Big Four" affiliates, and due to the stations' distance from Pensacola, the operations of WPMI and WJTC remain separate from those of WEAR-TV and WFGX.

Digital television

Digital channels

Analog-to-digital conversion

WPMI-TV discontinued regular programming on its analog signal, over
UHF channel 15, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States
transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 47 to channel 15 for post-transition operations.[9]

News operation

This section needs expansion with: include additional information about WPMI's news department history.. You can help by
adding to it.(May 2011)

Clear Channel Communications decided to start a full-fledged news department for WPMI shortly after the station took the NBC affiliation; the station debuted its local newscasts on January 1, 1996, with an hour-long 6 a.m. newscast, half-hour newscasts at noon and 5 p.m. on weekdays and evening newscasts at 5 and 10 p.m. nightly.

On August 24, 2009, WPMI adopted the "Local 15" branding, beginning with its 5:00 p.m. newscast; it also began using "The Weather Authority" as the brand for its weather forecasts. Both brands are a nod to
Cincinnati,
Ohiosister stationWKRC-TV, which has been known as "Local 12" since 2004 and used "The Weather Authority" name for its weather branding since the late 1980s. On April 22, 2012, WPMI-TV became the fourth and last television station in the Mobile-Pensacola market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in
high definition; the transition occurred the day after WALA-TV upgraded its own newscasts to HD.

On September 9, 2013, WPMI expanded its weekday morning newscast by a half-hour to 4:30 a.m. That same day, it also expanded its weekday noon newscast to one hour with the addition of a half-hour at 12:30 p.m.[12] On September 23, 2013, WPMI began producing two half-hour evening newscasts on sister station WJTC that airs weeknights at 6:30 and 9:00 p.m.;[13] the 9:00 p.m. newscast competes with WALA's longer-established primetime newscast (which comparatively runs for one hour) and ironically, also competes with fellow sister station WFGX's 9:00 p.m. newscast that is produced by WEAR-TV (a half-hour program that debuted one month earlier on August 12, 2013).

In June 2015, the 4:30 a.m. newscast was cancelled; under FCC regulations, a company providing more than 15% of a station's programming per-week would have an "attributable interest" in the station, thus counting as ownership. Sinclair cannot hold an attributable interest in WPMI due to its ownership of WEAR, as both are in the top 4 stations of the market.